Teen Hacker to Serve Time
Wired News Report
1:15 p.m. Sep. 21, 2000 PDT
A 16-year-old Miami boy known online as "c0mrade" was sentenced Thursday to serve jail time for breaking into Defense Department computers, marking the first time an underage hacker will have served time for a computer offense.
The teen, whose real name was not released, admitted in U.S. District Court in Miami that he was responsible for a series of attacks between June and October 1999 that forced a three-week shutdown of NASA computers and intercepted thousands of email messages within the Defense Department.
"This case, which marks the first time a juvenile hacker will serve time in a detention facility, shows that we take computer intrusion seriously and are working with our law enforcement partners to aggressively fight this problem," said Attorney General Janet Reno.
Prosecutors said that "c0mrade" downloaded proprietary software from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in June 1999. The software supported the International Space Station, including control of its temperature and humidity.
As a result, the government shut down NASA computer systems the following month, costing the agency $41,000.
The teen also admitted that in August 1999, he broke into the military network used by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, an arm of the Defense Department. There he installed a backdoor on the server, grabbing more than 3,300 email messages among agency staff.
In addition to serving time, "c0mrade" will write formal letters of apology to NASA and the Defense Department.
John Russel, a DOJ spokesman, said that the case is one of only a handful of successful prosecutions against minors accused of computer crimes.
Russell said that "C0mrade" was accused of violating the Computer Intrusions and Data Theft Act, but because he is a minor was charged with juvenile delinquency instead, a common practice at the DOJ.
"It's the same as any other crime," he said.
But Daniel Macallair of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice said that punishment in cases involving teenage hackers should be evaluated on their facts.
"It's a thrill-seeking thing and obviously sometimes it's for monetary gain," Macallair said.
While he did not advocate sparing the judicial rod where it is due, Macallair said that too stringent a sentence can spoil the child.
"These kids typically come from privileged backgrounds," he said. "They're not violent and so usually they're amenable to treatment outside of a detention center."
"If we can keep them out of a detention center or a juvenile penitentiary all the better." |
